Save Article

'Dynamic' Scoring Ends
Debate on Taxes, Revenue

Do tax cuts pay for themselves? That's been the hot debate of American political economy for the better part of three decades. But it ended last week -- with a whimper.

The great argument got its start in 1974, when a White House chief of staff named Donald Rumsfeld sent his deputy, Richard Cheney, to have lunch with an ebullient young economist named Art Laffer and his journalistic sidekick, Jude Wanniski. According to local lore, Mr. Laffer sketched a curve on a cocktail napkin suggesting that a cut in income taxes could...